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"WLANs / Wi-Fi" news, interviews, and features

News about WLANs / Wi-Fi

  • Three personal VPNs offer safer Wi-Fi

    It's a truth universally acknowledged that public Wi-Fi hotspots aren't secure, but they're so convenient that most of us use them anyway. That's why there was something of a panic last year when Eric Butler showed everyone how easy it is to hijack Facebook, Twitter and PayPal accounts on open Wi-Fi networks via his FireSheep Firefox add-on.

  • Cisco beefs up Wi-Fi mobile payment security

    Cisco is beefing up wireless transaction security with new software features for its Wi-Fi access points. The vendor says the changes add needed protection over and above that mandated by the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standard.

  • Smartphones, data hogs causing wireless network capacity crunch

    Two-thirds of wireless carriers say their networks are suffering due to the surge in data traffic. They're racing to apply a wide range of technical and tariff changes to cope with the problem, and with the growing customer dissatisfaction, according to a new global survey of network operations staff.

  • Inside an alleged iPad killer: the Samsung Galaxy Tab

    While not quite ready to declare the Galaxy Tab a true Apple iPad killer after looking inside the new 7-inch touchscreen tablet computer, teardown specialists at iFixit confirm that Samsung has delivered some technology to die for.

  • AirMagnet bolsters Wi-Fi management tools

    AirMagnet is releasing updates to two of its main Wi-Fi network management tools. Wi-Fi Analyzer now can explore delve deeper into roaming problems. And Survey can now run passive and active Wi-Fi scans at the same time.

  • Wi-Fi won't kill the office LAN ... yet

    While Wi-Fi has increasingly become the primary choice for office worker connectivity, it may be some time before it replaces wired networks altogether, according to panelists at the Interop conference, held last week in New York.

  • How 'smart antennas' could boost Wi-Fi performance

    We've all had the problem of going into a crowded Starbucks and suffering through a substandard Wi-Fi signal, most likely caused by too few access points and too many end users. But what if Wi-Fi antennas could do a better job of detecting how many devices were in a given room and could push data out to them more rapidly on a one-by-one basis? That's what researchers at Gonzaga University are trying to accomplish by testing "smart antenna" technology in their new research lab that just received a federal research grant worth nearly $1.2 million from the National Science Foundation. In this interview, we ask Gonzaga electrical engineering associate professor Steve Schennum to outline the basics of smart antenna systems, to describe how they'll improve Wi-Fi performance and to describe how a smart antenna lab would help out small wireless companies.